Food books have become as ubiquitous,
and just as hard to keep
up with, as new product lines in
the supermarket. On Amazon I
counted 2,259 food titles published in 2015,
on such topics as sustainable agriculture,
hunger, and food systems. Compare that with
only 436 such titles published 10 years before.
Neither count includes cooking, gardening, or
diet books. It might be argued that not much
more could be said about human sustenance.

Not unless, of course, a brave soul wants
to attempt the grand synthesis. One contender
who has stepped into the ring is
Michael S. Carolan, a professor of sociology
at Colorado State University. His book
No One Eats Alone takes on no less a subject
than the human connections that undergird
the global food system. Carolan’s contribution
should not be confused with cookbook
author Deborah Madison’s What We Eat
When We Eat Alone, a whimsical, tasty treatment
of life at a table for one, nor theologian
Norman Wirzba’s Food and Faith, whose constant
dinner companion is, well, you guessed
it. Carolan is concerned not with who sits
by us at meals but with our food system’s
potential to either connect us to or isolate
us from food production and each other.

To explore this theme, Carolan relies on
interviews with some 250 food system participants,
from farmers to corporate executives,
around the world. One of his more unsettling
conversations is with a food scientist who
explains that the aquaculture industry can
make salmon flesh any color that consumers
prefer. In cavalier fashion, the scientist
describes how precise adjustments in carotenoid
pigments in farm-raised salmon feed
produce the perfect pink blend—number “33”
on the color chart—that consumers associate
with healthy salmon. This cynical manipulation
of buyer “taste” is one way that the food
industry subverts connections between people
and their food, presenting what Carolan
calls a “highly reductionist understanding
of health.” He contrasts this scientific propensity
to narrow health interests with the
approach of the Maori, New Zealand’s native
people, who see “good health [as] a balance
among mental, physical, family/social, and
spiritual dimensions.”

Though this is not your typical anti-corporate
diatribe—Carolan’s research includes
voices from all persuasions—his sympathies
clearly lie with perspectives that promote, as
he puts it, “connectivity.” Finding kinship
with the Slow Food movement, he deepens
the idea of “slow” over “fast” food by highlighting
the importance of care and reflection.
We hear the by-now-familiar mantra
“Know where your food comes from,” spoken
by a Canadian food activist for whom this
involves “encouraging people to care more
about their food and the people involved in
preparing it.” The case that Carolan lays out
echoes the familiar refrain of critic Michael
Pollan and other anti-industrial foodies: “The
food system is broken.” For Carolan, the
repair job requires rebuilding the “social
infrastructure” of our “foodscape” and the
relationships that glue it together.

We learn little, unfortunately, about how
to realize this vision. In a too-abbreviated
fashion, we hear about food hubs, farmers’
markets, and community-supported agriculture,
all part of the standard playbook of
the alternative food movement. In one of his
few forays into public policy, Carolan notes
how the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for
Americans, released last year, presented an
opportunity to link dietary health, sustainable
agriculture, and reduced carbon emissions
in one important piece of federal policy.

Formulated every five years by a panel
of health and nutrition experts, the Guidelines
provide essential scientific recommendations
on every facet of food policy and
practice in the United States, including the
composition of school meals and healthy
eating habits for Supplemental Nutritional
Assistance Program recipients and Americans
more broadly. Sustainability advocates
pushed to include environmental considerations
in the current Guidelines’ dietary
advice, but ultimately their aspirations
succumbed to “Big Food” politics. Carolan
skates over this promising policy mobilization,
which represented a perfect illustration
of what’s necessary to connect people and
food, and could reemerge in the lead-up to
the next Guidelines.

Though unacknowledged, the ideas of
Harvard University political scientist Robert
Putnam’s Bowling Alone reverberate throughout
Carolan’s book. Putnam attributes much
of society’s ability, or inability, to function
to the basic, everyday human interactions
within communities, neighborhoods, and
families—what he and others term “social
capital.” Applying these ideas about the
power of human connection (real face time,
as it were) to the complexities of our food
system is effectively Carolan’s contribution
in No One Eats Alone. What’s lacking are more
robust examples and compelling analysis.
There are some good moments, as in the case
of the salmon colorist, but Carolan never
shares a synthesis or compiled findings from
his interviews. Stylistically, too, he seems to
have difficulty maintaining focus. Numerous
paragraphs packed with sentences ending in
question marks, terminated by a “Bingo!” or
a “Voila!,” come off as an overeager application
of the Socratic method.

Carolan has given us a book whose theme
of building social relationships resonates
in these times of disconnection across the
global food chain. While there is certainly
a place at the table for No One Eats Alone, I
look forward to more substantial offerings
in the future.

Mark Winne is a senior advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the author of the forthcoming book Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement (Praeger Press).

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